unpopular retro opinions

[wolfmcbeard]

1. The original PlayStation is overrated.
2. Half Life : Blue Shift was a good expansion.
3. The Nintendo 64 trident controller blows, especially the 1st party ones.
4. Up is not jump.
5. Literally every d-pad on every console sucks.

[Matthias]

On 7/20/2019 at 8:48 AM, WalterAB said:

- Redneck Rampage is not that bad. In fact I'd say it's a very solid 7/10 game.

 

 

It is, but the level design was sometimes very confusing and you get stuck very easily.

[RichardDS90]

On 7/22/2019 at 9:29 AM, wolfmcbeard said:

4. Up is not jump.

It is a really strange button to jump. Turrican is surprisingly the only game that actually suits it. Especially on the Amiga with a joypad.

 

Every other game that does that is quite alien to me. Rush N Attack especially!

[wolfmcbeard]

31 minutes ago, Salahmander2 said:

It is a really strange button to jump. Turrican is surprisingly the only game that actually suits it. Especially on the Amiga with a joypad.

 

Every other game that does that is quite alien to me. Rush N Attack especially!

There were several games I had on the Genesis that did the d-pad up to jump thing, I can't even remember what they were now, haven't seen that system since 2000.
The closest modern equivalent I can think of is a Bethesda thing, Y/triangle to jump. E on pc for Morrowind but I can't remember if it's the same in Fallout 3,nv,4 or Oblivion and Skyrim. 
I'm so used to A,x, and space being jump.
The Amiga was a pc wasn't it, I'm honestly ignorant when it comes to those machines, most I know is that the Commodore 64 had 64k of ram.

[dr_st]

Using Up direction as jump is weird and unnatural on a D-Pad, but is fine in keyboard-controlled games.

 

Which reminds me of another unpopular retro opinion I hold:

Keyboards are generally better than gamepads

[OliveTree]

On 7/22/2019 at 1:29 AM, wolfmcbeard said:

2. Half Life : Blue Shift was a good expansion.

I played Blue Shift this month for the first time, as I remember hearing it wasn't really well received and I just never got around to playing it, and it was really good. I think I probably prefer it to opposing force. Yeah, OF has more checkmarks to put on the back of the box, longer campaign, new enemies, different weapons, etc. But BS was very, idk, heartfelt in its simplicity, in a way that's kind of hard to place. It's cozy.

[Avoozl]

HL Opposing Force was much better than the base game.

[snapshot]

I hear that very often, everytime I watch a video or read something about Opposing Force there's always something along the lines of "improves upon the original by introducing new and interesting weapons"

[OliveTree]

I enjoy a lot of my time with it, of course, just too often I found Opposing Force's level design stretched my patience. When the designers can't think of anything for you to do, they rely on NPC based puzzles, your weird grappling hook barnacle, etc. It feels more linear by far and often what it has in store for me is something very repetitive.

[wolfmcbeard]

7 hours ago, EtherBot said:

I played Blue Shift this month for the first time, as I remember hearing it wasn't really well received and I just never got around to playing it, and it was really good. I think I probably prefer it to opposing force. Yeah, OF has more checkmarks to put on the back of the box, longer campaign, new enemies, different weapons, etc. But BS was very, idk, heartfelt in its simplicity, in a way that's kind of hard to place. It's cozy.

Don't get me wrong, Opposing Force is a good expansion, but Blue Shift keeps things simple, the only difference is that you don't get the HEV suit and have to use BMRFsec armor that is admittedly kinda rare compared to HEV batteries and charging stations, but it did a good job being a Half Life expansion.
Opposing Force can sometimes feel like a different game made in Goldsource like CS or TF classic.

[WalterAB]

On 7/22/2019 at 6:46 AM, Matthias said:

 

It is, but the level design was sometimes very confusing and you get stuck very easily.

It has its flaws. To me the worst is the tiny key sprites that are so easily missed, especially when it's up against textures with a similar color. Also, the fact that all keys look the same, and you basically have to guess which one opens which door.

 

The level design, in my opinion, went for realism first and gameplay second, which is why it's not as good as the big 3 of the build engine. You can't deny that the levels look amazing and have a great atmosphere, though.

 

Like I said, it's not a 10/10, but it's also not the garbage so many people say it is. It's the best build game outside the big 3, by far.

[WalterAB]

On 7/22/2019 at 5:29 AM, wolfmcbeard said:

4. Up is not jump.

The original Prince of Persia and the games influenced by it (Flashback, Blackthorne, Oddworld etc.) made it work. Other than that, I agree.

[unerxai]

Rise of the Triad is pretty good

Edited July 23, 2019 by unerxai
Typo

[RichardDS90]

1 hour ago, WalterAB said:

The original Prince of Persia and the games influenced by it (Flashback, Blackthorne, Oddworld etc.) made it work. Other than that, I agree.

Somehow I completely forgot about them, and as you said, it works and doesn't feel so overly sensetive.

[[McD] James]

1 hour ago, unerxai said:

Rise of the Triad is pretty good

 

Rise of the Triad is spectacular. It is known. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by Ajora

[Koko Ricky]

Mario 64 is conceptually interesting but it's a bit boring. Really, it was Mario Oddessy that showed how insanely fun open world experimentation can be for that franchise.

[axdoomer]

PSX Doom is better than the original Doom and has better music.

[dr_st]

8 hours ago, WalterAB said:

The original Prince of Persia and the games influenced by it (Flashback, Blackthorne, Oddworld etc.) made it work. Other than that, I agree.

It's true about PoP, don't know about Flashback (haven't played it), but Blackthorne and Oddworld actually use a jump button, not Up Arrow, even on the PC.

[WalterAB]

2 hours ago, dr_st said:

It's true about PoP, don't know about Flashback (haven't played it), but Blackthorne and Oddworld actually use a jump button, not Up Arrow, even on the PC.

Oh yeah, Up Arrow is used to lean against the wall in Blackthorne, I totally forgot. Yeah, but Flashback definitely uses Up for jump (just checked lol). Great game, by the way.

EDIT: Wait, both Oddworld and Blackthorne do use Up as a jump. Unless you consider that action simply climbing, not jumping?

 

Edited July 24, 2019 by WalterAB

[dr_st]

Yes, you have a point; to be precise, PoP uses UP for both vertical and forward jumps, whereas Blackthorne / Oddworld use UP for vertical jumping / climbing only, and have a separate button for forward jumps.

 

Interestingly, some versions of PoP (Genesis comes to mind) also separated vertical and forward jumps to different buttons.

 

So I guess it is a matter of perspective.

Edited July 24, 2019 by dr_st

[wolfmcbeard]

18 hours ago, GoatLord said:

Mario 64 is conceptually interesting but it's a bit boring.

I've never been able to finish that game after Jolly Roger Bay, looking back at the N64, it had some good ideas in games and something about it being able to do 3D graphics from a cartridge is cool and all, but they tended to perform poorly.
Best Mario is Galaxy.

Edited July 24, 2019 by wolfmcbeard

[Maser]

On 7/23/2019 at 7:57 PM, axdoomer said:

PSX Doom is better than the original Doom and has better music.

 

I been playing a lot of the PSX Doom as of late.  I don't like playing on UV difficulty due to the fact that some maps that are loaded with enemies on that difficulty will randomly cause the game to crash if too much shit is on the screen.  As for the music, I think of it more of ambient sounds rather than an actual music track.  Hell, there's one track that literally sounds like someone having an asthma attack. 

[Lygophilia]

1980s fighting games wasn't all that bad.

 

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Lygophilia

[Darth Nivek 117]

On 6/15/2019 at 2:58 PM, Eurisko said:

The original Halo was overrated and boring.

Honestly, as someone who loves Halo I agree with that. I did force myself to get through it when I was a 6 year old kid when it came out but I did give the sequel a chance and thats what got me into the franchise.  If you meant CE then yeah I agree. 

[kinker31]

Wii Music wasn't that bad of a game.

It did kinda get stale after some tine, though.

...Does the original Wii count as retro?

[Komenja]

-The best music in Quake 1 was in Dissolution of Eternity.

-While Daggerfall technically improved on it in every way, Arena is still more fun to actually play.

-The Gex trilogy are genuinely good games and part of me dies inside when people lump them together with stuff like Bubsy in quality.

-Turok 1 > Turok 2

[hybridial]

On 7/12/2019 at 4:03 PM, geo said:

CastleVania SOTN is terrible, because it relies on grinding like all terrible games. Why have skill when you can have time invested.

 

 

I wouldn't go as far to call the whole game terrible, because the first half is good. The game is ruined by the inverted castle, which is rushed filler garbage.

 

And whilst I'm posting that I guess I can say a few other things.

 

Mario 64: It's by far my favourite platformer mario game, which is easy to be because I like it, and don't like any of the others much at all. 

Half Life sucks :)

Final Fantasy is consistently the worst JRPG series, certainly of the ones that ran for many sequels and had success. 

 

Surprisingly, that's all I can think of when it comes to retro gaming. My more controversial opinions tend to apply to modern games because well, most of them suck anyway. I'll have things to add once Dark Souls is officially retro though for sure. :p 

 

Edited January 14, 2020 by hybridial

[Revae]

I feel like some of these should have your age posted next to them. Not to just pin my disagreements on a generational gap, just for context and curiosity.

[seed]

16 minutes ago, Revae said:

I feel like some of these should have your age posted next to them. Not to just pin my disagreements on a generational gap, just for context and curiosity.

 

And how would that help exactly?

[Revae]

3 minutes ago, seed said:

 

And how would that help exactly?

Just to see what perspective the opinions are coming from. Nostalgia factor is one thing, but also a lot of retro games blew peoples minds on release due to technological advancements. If you've seen those advancements first in later games done better you might feel like it's taking a big step back to play many of the older games, rather than the big step forward it was in it's era.
For instance I agree that the original Halo was overrated, mostly due to being too long and repetitive (and PC players didn't even have the fancy visuals to awe at), and I played that on release, for PC anyway (I guess it was already around 2 years old by that point). But I disagree that Mario 64 didn't show the how fun an open(ish) world exploration platformer could be, despite it not being as punchy as newer releases. The potential was super apparent. I would say it's level design in later areas is pretty bad, once they start getting into abstract shape caverns and such, though.